Rachel Starr Thomson

My friend Alexis and I poured milk for about a hundred people last night, at a dinner down on Drouillard… and if you know Windsor, you know that’s not exactly high society. New Song Church serves dinner for anyone who will come on Friday nights, so we’re talking homeless people and a lot of folks on welfare; anyone who needs it.

I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t especially enjoy it. I’m an introvert, and I’m going through one of my particularly introverted phrases, so the idea of going out and interacting with people I don’t know wasn’t too appealing. And I’ll be honest with you: it isn’t comfortable to cross class lines like that, to look a lot of people in their worn and weary faces and know that your life and theirs exist on what feels like two different sides of a chasm. I mean, most of these people look like life has been trampling them down from day one.

But I went, because I knew I should, and I served milk, cringing inwardly because I REALLY didn’t feel like being around people (some of you know what I’m talking about), and I did it with the best attitude I could drum up… feeling guilty for not loving these people like Jesus does, because I know He does, and I know that chasm doesn’t present any problem for Him.

Toward the end of the evening I really started asking the Lord how I could connect with Him in a place like this, and I heard that still small voice… saying that I didn’t need to be out there serving those people with a good attitude, I just needed to be out there serving HIM in love. “Whatsoever you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done to me.” It’s not about drumming up love for a lot of strangers, it’s about loving the Lord my God, my Jesus who gave His all for me and daily awes me with His holiness and love, with all my heart. I wish I’d gotten that earlier.

It reminds me of a song Rebecca St. James wrote recently called “Beautiful Stranger.” The chorus goes:

Won’t You tell me now when did I see
You in need of water?
Oh, and tell me now, when did I see You
Hungry on the street?
God, I hear You calling out to me
In the voices of the least of these
Calling me to reach beyond my world
To the beautiful stranger
Beautiful Stranger

Looking for Him,
Rachel

* * *

I wrote a book. I’d be much obliged if you’d check it out… there’s a preview chapter available; just click on the link.

I was asked to review The Old Schoolhouse Magazine recently, and had a lot of fun doing so.

It’s not hard to see why The Old Schoolhouse Magazine is one of the most popular homeschooling magazines in the country. It’s thick, and it’s not full of fluff. Articles range from the practical to the humorous to the challenging to the downright inspirational. They keep readers informed on what’s happening in the wide world of homeschooling (conventions, must-read books, trends, legal info), provide practical helps, teaching tips, and curriculum reviews, and tell the stories of homeschool parents, students, graduates, and others on this joyous (and tumultuous) journey. The tone of the magazine is highly relational: these writers aren’t distant experts dispensing wisdom from the towers of knowledge, they’re homeschoolers just like you and me. TOS connects families across the U.S. and all over the world and joins them in one exciting conversation.

Perhaps that’s TOS’s greatest strength. They’re doing more than publishing a magazine: they’re actively creating a community. Most author bylines include email addresses, Web sites, and blog URLs (many of which send the reader to HomeschoolBlogger.com, a huge blog community created by TOS), which allow the reader to interact, follow up, and link hands with their compatriots around the world.

- Rachel Thomson

FOR SUBSCRIPTION AND OTHER INFORMATION, VISIT WWW.THEHOMESCHOOLMAGAZINE.COM

Life is mostly predictable, but now and then something BIG happens.

Reading Matthew 28 last night, I was struck by the angel. Throughout Scripture “the angel of the LORD” sometimes visits men, intervening in wars and upheaval, battling demonic powers, bringing messages from the throne of almighty God. And now he comes again: “And behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.”

This awesome being comes from another world and paralyses the Roman soldiers with fear. His skin is bright as lightning; his clothing shines. He bypasses the soldiers entirely and speaks only to those toward whom God is looking: women.

The thing is, the soldiers all saw him. Their world was literally shaken, invaded by the supernatural, touched by the eternal. Yet they allowed themselves to be bought off by the religious leaders. Both the soldiers and the religious leaders chose to turn a blind eye to the greatest event in history, because they had a life to live and they were going to live it their way.

Astounding ignorance, yes. Unbelievable stubborness. We, two thousand years later, who only remember these men for the lie they spread, can hardly believe how short-sighted they were.

But the tomb is still empty. The supernatural has invaded your life, too, because it has touched this entire world in a way that will never be overshadowed.

What are you doing with it?

It has been Tuesday for exactly… one hour and twenty-five minutes.

Insomnia is not precisely the joy and delight of my life. It lends itself to odd reminiscences, sometimes to bouts of extreme penitence, and even, on occasion, to blogging.

I am happy to announce that tonight’s insomnia is the odd reminiscence kind, so I shouldn’t have anything to undo in the morning (like extremely penitent blog posts… “I raised my eyebrow at the cat this morning! How could I have been so HEARTLESS?”).

I think to myself that there must be some simple method of duplicating blog posts that does not involve a great deal of cutting-and-pasting. Perhaps some kind soul will share it with me one day, before one of my three blogs folds under the pressure.

If you’re familiar with Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, you know what that verse is all about. It was an ancient prophecy, fulfilled when Herod ordered that all children under two years old in the Bethlehem region be slaughtered. It was his desperate bid to stop God from deposing him.

Satan in his craftiness and humans in their selfishness can cause enormous amounts of pain and darkness in our lives. Events seem to come from out of nowhere and knock the legs out from under us, and we don’t know where to turn. As a mother in Bethlehem I’m sure I wouldn’t have understood; I couldn’t have seen past my own pain.

But God was working.

“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

In the darkness of Bethlehem, under the shadow of murder and hatred, Light and Love took shape in the body of a child and entered the world. The mothers who lost their children had another Son born to them. One who would offer them hope and an eternal future.

I think that it still works this way today. God is quietly working “under the shadow of death,” and we will see His handiwork soon enough if we will wait and trust Him. Trust Him with our pain. Trust Him with our tears. Trust Him with our loss. Trust Him to be more than we can imagine.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a poem that, to me, expresses this other-world perspective on darkness. It’s called “Perplexed Music.”

  EXPERIENCE, like a pale musician, holds A dulcimer of patience in his hand, Whence harmonies, we cannot understand, Of God; will in his worlds, the strain unfolds In sad-perplexed minors: deathly colds Fall on us while we hear, and countermand Our sanguine heart back from the fancyland With nightingales in visionary wolds. We murmur ' Where is any certain tune Or measured music in such notes as these ? ' But angels, leaning from the golden seat, Are not so minded their fine ear hath won The issue of completed cadences, And, smiling down the stars, they whisper--      SWEET.

Trust today. His light is coming soon.

This is a test of the Emergency Rachel System.
Here goes nothing…